What is Demand Gen?
Part of the Google Ads universe, Demand Gen ad functionality has been available to select advertisers in Beta format for the last few months, and it is now live for all users. But what is it? And how will it affect your Google Ads and PPC work?
Demand Gen is essentially an expansion of Google Discovery Ads.
Demand Gen is is an awareness channel within Google Ads, but it does allow you to optimise for conversions. Leveraging what Discovery Ads were doing, they allow you to create bespoke audience segments to then target people across the entire Google stack. Eg. Search, Maps, GDN, YouTube.
Google’s Demand Gen could be the new big deal in paid social marketing
Taking a leaf from the world of paid social, Google's creation of Demand Gen further positions the platform as more than solely a keyword based ad channel, which is an interesting prospect for those of us working in Google Ads and pay-per-click (PPC) spaces.
Some features of Demand Gen that weren't as prevalent on Discovery Ads include the ability to run YouTube shorts as ads, and also the inclusion of carousel ads, akin to those you'd see in Meta.
From some early testing for a client in the apparel space, the platform has been recommending daily spends in the area of £30 to £40, so if you’re focused on PPC you should keep that in mind as a starting point.
It's important to look at view through conversions from these ads, given that the intent is different to pure search ads.
The other element to consider is testing various conversion events as the objective. From early testing whilst in Beta, it was challenging to get purchase conversions and so testing "Add To Basket" or even "Clicks" as an initial conversion type could give the campaign data to learn from quicker, to then allow you to optimise for conversions at a later date.
Demand Gen: More data needed?
We are currently testing just using it to remarket to past web visitors, without optimised targeting to see if it will help generate sales conversions.
At this point while we’re assessing it, we don't necesarily see it being an all singing all dancing sales or lead gen campaign format, given that the intent of people on those platforms is wide and varied. However it’s early days and Demand Gen could prove us wrong, and be the thing we didn’t know we needed!
Our suggestion for digital marketing managers and advertisers would be to use it in addition to the search, shopping, local ads they may already be running. Keep an eye out for any uplift you may see on site from GA4 data!
Having spoken with Google, they are most likely going to phase out Discovery Ads and Demand Gen will take over. We can already see this now, with Discovery Ads no longer available as an easy to find campaign type, and only available it you select "Custom Campaign" type.
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